HILO (KHON2) – An alert from police has surfaces as people are taking low denomination U.S. bills and turning them into $100 bills.
Authorities said it’s happened about a dozen times in just the past month in Hilo.
A cashier at Ohana Foods in Hilo said she had a feeling something was off when a woman handed her a $100 bill on Saturday for her $15 purchase.
“I did our protocols and procedures which is to mark the bill with the marker and lift it up to see if it has the black line that all real money has,” explained sales associate and cashier Maelyn Ramos. “When she gave me the bill, it looked different from a regular $100.”
Ramos said the woman told her it was an old bill.
“I had an old bill in our tip jar so I pulled it out on the side and I said it looks different, it’s more of a yellowish tone vs the bill she gave me was black, a lot of the print was black,” Ramos said.
When she marked the bill with the marker the color came out yellow, which means it’s real currency. “So I was confused, I put it in the air, I saw the black line, and I asked my supervisor too,” she added.
Ramos lifted up the bill one more time and noticed a faded 1 marking in the top corner.
She then noticed the faint letters printed on it too.
She took out a $1 bill and compared it with the money she had been handed.
“I realized this is real money, it was a one dollar bill they bleached or washed and printed $100 on top,” Ramos said. “My gut instinct was telling me something was wrong, and its scary what people are doing now because a lot of people would have looked at it and said it’s real; which I was close to doing at that point but something in me was like it doesn’t look okay.”
She said the woman remained calm and said the money was from her boss and her payroll.
“I told her this is a counterfeit bill, it’s not $100, I can’t give it back to you, I’m going to have to report this to Hawaii island police,” explained Ramos. “After I said HPD she got a little shaken up and asking for the money back, but you know, we can’t do that because we’re giving her another opportunity to try it somewhere else.”
The woman handed Ramos another $100. “It was the exact same thing, it was washed, so I collected two and told her this was counterfeit too and she said she needed the money back to she could tell her boss and her boss was going to hear it from her,” Ramos explained.
Ramos noticed the woman had $20’s in her wallet. “I said do you want to pay with the 20s? And she said no, it’s not hers.”
“That’s when it popped in my head, that’s where she got the $20’s from, she’s giving stores fake $100 to get real cash out of it, and she doesn’t want to use the real money,” Ramos told KHON2.
“I’m glad I was able to catch that, and hopefully this will help others,” she said.
Hawaii Island police said they’ve had about one dozen cases in the last month of this type of counterfeit.
“It appears the culprits are taking $1, in another case a $2 bill and bleaching the ink off, and printing over the original currency to make it look like a $100,” explained Hawaii island police Capt. Rio Amon-Wilkins. “Because it’s being printed on original U.S. currency notes, the pen still works properly and doesn’t identify it as counterfeit.”
“This is the first time, to my knowledge, we’ve had this type of case where they’re using the original U.S. currency notes,” Amon-Wilkins added.
He said the people will purchase something of small value, “if you buy something for $5 and get $95 back in real currency, you’ve now washed your hand of the bill and in that case, the stores are the victims because they’re out $100.”
Over on Maui, MPD said on Friday, April 26, an individual attempted to buy something with a fake $100. Just like Ramos did, the person checked the bill’s validity with a counterfeit pen, but it showed it was printed on valid US currency paper. MPD said it was a $10 bill that had been ‘washed’ and ‘reprinted’ with the $100 bill cast.
Police said people should be aware when accepting larger bills and pay close attention to it.
“If you do think it’s counterfeit, you have the right not to accept it,”
Capt. Rio Amon-Wilkins, Hawaii Island Police
“We’ve identified a few persons of interest that we’re looking into and trying to piece everything together and see if there’s a common denominator to these cases,” he added.
He said people should get a good description of the person who passes the bill along, try and get a vehicle description, license plate, or surveillance footage can help identify the person who passes the fake bills along.